The first week back have been great even though it was a short one.

This week we have done lots of learning about our community and our British celebrations.

The children were very excited about Bonfire night on Tuesday and we spent lots of time chatting about their experiences of Bonfire Night and fireworks  with their families, at organized displays and on TV.

In phonics this week we sang songs and made lots of different firework noises, comparing loud and quiet noises and the ways in which we could make the noises with our mouths and moving our bodies like fireworks too.

The most important part of our learning about Bonfire night was about keeping ourselves, other people and animals safe. We discussed our right to be kept safe (UNCRC A19) and the importance of listening to our grown-ups whose job it is to keep us safe from harm and also making sure that our pets and wildlife were kept safe from harm as well.

Our activities are a very important part of finding out about British culture and it helps the children to gain an awareness of celebrations and traditions which take place in Britain. It also gives us the opportunity to talk about safety as part of our safeguarding curriculum and discuss the adult’s role to make sure children are kept safe as this is their right.

Other learning this week included recalling our experiences using Tapestry. There were lots of pictures of the interesting and exciting things that children had been getting up to over half term and the children really enjoyed sharing these experiences with their friends using the pictures to help them. This is great for their communication and language and self esteem. We also asked permission to view the photos to help reinforce to the children about their right to say 'no' if they didn't want others to see their pictures.

 On Friday we also looked at some pictures of the floods that were happening around the country. We talked about why this had happened and role-played some of the ways that the emergency services were helping to keep the people and animals safe as the waters rose.

Towards the end of the week we recalled the poppies that we had made (in  a Jackson Pollock style) and looked at the photographs of them in their new place in the South Normanton Community. Some children had already seen them and we hope lots more will take a look at them on Shiners Way over the next week.

We talked about Remembrance Day and whet both the red poppies were for, discussing how a long time ago, the soldiers fought to keep us safe. The children week also very interested in the purple poppies and we discussed how animals such as carrier pigeon and horses also played an important part in helping too.

We will be revisiting this  leaning next week as we continue to learn about Remembrance Day and its importance as part of our British culture and learning about the history of our nation and indeed our world.